The Dragon Age: Inquisition Thread

[Roguey]

Vogel really didn't talk much at all about the combat. ^_^

 

[imweasel]

Also best PC game and best RPG of the year.

I love their qualified editor comments:

"The combat gives you all the options, you can use the tactical camera to find enemies' weak spots or you can just run in and hack and slash"

Are you kidding me? PC game of the year? RPG of the year? The game is a shitty action game and a terrible, fucking terrible, console port. The tactical camera is broken and absolutely useless. They are so full of shit.

Well, that's it. There goes IGN's reputatation straight down the drain.

.....oh wait.

 

[Lhynn]

Game is honestly bad, its kinda funny watching all those retards praising it. Like a confirmation that the world has in fact, gone mad.

 

[Space Satan]

The man behind Geneforge, everyone. Well, at least there's no ponies.

There are.

 

[GameOver]

Not sure why I picked this up. I killed 10 rams for meat to feed some villagers who were so retarded and useless, they couldn't feed themselves. I can't believe the liberal agenda is being pushed through an RPG.

 

[Gondolin]

The Dragon Age games take place in a huge, complex setting, full of tons of races, factions, political squabbles, and the other ingredients from which juicy dark fantasy is made. They also have combat, spells, skill trees, and other RPG junk, but their main feature is complex and epic branching stories you can really sink your teeth into.

Sinking your teeth in bland, watered-down fare is a bad idea.

 

[Multiple Sarcasm]

Jeff Vogel

It's like he deliberately collected every retardism possible to write that wall-o-text advertisement.
But I expected nothing less from him.

 

[Crevice tab]

Stand back everybody, it's the JEFF VOGEL review: http://jeff-vogel.blogspot.com/2015/01/storytelling-critical-nitpickery-and.html



GOLD STANDARD OF STORYTELLING, BITCHES

Funny thing is Vogel actually makes better games than Bioware. Perhaps his recent fetish with Dragon Age is the reason for the in Avadon?

 

[Sykar]

"The Dragon Age games take place in a huge, complex setting, full of tons of races, factions, political squabbles, and the other ingredients from which juicy dark fantasy is made. They also have combat, spells, skill trees, and other RPG junk, but their main feature is complex and epic branching stories you can really sink your teeth into."

 

[Gondolin]

It's like he deliberately collected every retardism possible to write that wall-o-text advertisement.
But I expected nothing less from him.

It's still sad to read such crap. The Geneforge story is much better than any DA or ME story.

 

[Machocruz]

Man, shills and sycophants aren't even trying anymore. It used to be that when you threw a bunch of adjectives out there, you'd make up some nonsense explaining how the thing you were shilling for is complex and how it's branching stories are epic. Nowadays, what's to stop someone from saying that Barbie Horse Adventure is a thrilling adventure with unparalleled emotional resonance; a breathtaking feat of game design and storytelling?

 

[Crevice tab]

"The Dragon Age games take place in a huge, complex setting, full of tons of races, factions, political squabbles, and the other ingredients from which juicy dark fantasy is made. They also have combat, spells, skill trees, and other RPG junk, but their main feature is complex and epic branching stories you can really sink your teeth into."

Well the setting is huge I'll grant him that. It may be very generic, extremely boring and filled with plenty of shit but there's a lot of it.

 

[Azeot]

That guy that made the long ass review is a moron. And not because he has a different opinion than mine, but because he has no fucking clue on how to write a proper review. That wall of text is basically an underdeveloped, unexplained, incoherent and totally subjective mess. There are a few point on which I agree with him, but hell if that is the way to write a review.
Nowadays to be a blogger or a gaming journalist you don't need to know how to write, if not an essay, at least an informal explanation of your thoughts about a subject. You just go at the keyboard, blow the cock of fanboys and devs a bit and you're done. Now you're a gaming journalist, congratulations, RPS will be happy to have you.

 

[Infinitron]

Nowadays to be a blogger or a gaming journalist you don't need to know how to write, if not an essay, at least an informal explanation of your thoughts about a subject. You just go at the keyboard, blow the cock of fanboys and devs a bit and you're done. Now you're a gaming journalist, congratulations, RPS will be happy to have you.

Well, Jeff is actually a game developer. He makes indie turn-based RPGs. Take that as you will.

 

[Azeot]

The moment you posted i was about to add this:

P.S: I understand that he is a developer or something, but this doesn't chance anything. The moment you got a blog which is not explicitly "just for fun" and you decide to write a "serious" review of a product, you have an obligation to the reader to be as professional as possible, because that piece you write will probably be seen by people that doesn't know you and can't interpret on the basis of personality and precedent reviews. So post something decent or nothing at all.

 

[vonAchdorf]

Well, Jeff is actually a game developer. He makes indie turn-based RPGs. Take that as you will.

I think he has some valid points in his review, but gets others totally wrong, and he kind of feels obligated to not stray too far from the neutral path.

But maybe he doesn't take DA:I too seriously, Wizbian kinda hints at the way, he approaches the DA games and therefore has respective expectations.

 

[Astral Rag]

My boyfriend in Dragon Age: Inquisition broke my heart when he told me he was gay

The latest fantasy adventure from Bioware features a surprisingly deep and personal relationship system that players may literally fall in love with

“Your place or mine?” Dragon Age: Inquisition offers more than just sword fights with mythical warriors – it lets you date them as well Photograph: EA


When I started playing Dragon Age: Inquisition, the latest narrative adventure from Canadian developer Bioware, I thought it was going to be like any other epic fantasy role-playing game – except that at some point, it would allow me to do the no-pants dance with a 10-foot man-bull voiced by Hollywood actor Freddie Prinze Jr.

This is, after all BioWare, a studio renowned for exploring human relationships – or in the case of its Mass Effect sci-fi series, intergalactic pansexual human-alien relationships. In Dragon Age: Inquisition, you play a character of your own creation, tasked with saving the vast and cultured world of Thedas from, well, a big green bad thing in the sky that spawns demons. Through the game’s intricate conversation system, you’re able to conduct elaborate affairs with computer-controlled characters, one of whom is – yes – a 10-foot man-bull voiced by Freddie Prinze Jr. Why would anyone pass up that opportunity?

I’ll tell you why – because of Dorian. Turning up early in the game as an optional companion, Dorian is a terribly posh upper-class mage, with a hipster moustache and a painful past. I took to him immediately, and as I wandered the pastoral paradise of the Hinterlands and the opulent city of Val Royeaux, he was always ready with some wiseass joke about pretty much every dire situation we found ourselves in. Swoon.

So yes, I ditched Freddie Prinze Beefcake and became devoted to my lovely sarcastic mage. When I wasn’t slaughtering enemies, I would go and chat to him in the library (where he could often be found perusing the Dragon Age equivalent of Mills & Boon novels), just to hear about his day. I waited patiently for the moment when our relentless, banterous flirting would come to its explosive conclusion. And then suddenly it did, but as a measure of the game’s relative emotional complexity, it didn’t go as planned.

Mystique and misunderstanding
On this fateful day, my lovely boyfriend asked if I would come to help him confront his father, a gruff driving force in Dorian’s own story. This was our moment, I thought – after the talk, we would share hilarious anecdotes about his troublesome dad, I would listen to Dorian’s sad, personal stories, eyes brimming with tears, and then we’d snuggle up next to the fire and – goodness me, this is turning into a piece of erotic fan fiction. You get the idea.

However, the confrontation took an unexpected turn. Dorian’s father had disowned him, you see, because Dorian “preferred the company of men”. Ohhhhh. As soon as we got back to HQ, I confronted the man I thought I loved.

But here’s the thing. This character, all made up of polygons, designed and shaped and written by other humans who are probably nothing like him, gave me the most human response I think I’ve ever experienced in a video game. He apologised. He said he couldn’t change his nature. I accepted that, I said I was proud of him for standing up to his father, and when I chastised him for leading me on. He said he’d stop if I wanted, but that he really liked me as a friend, and that he felt our flirtatious banter was a part of that. Somehow, someone at Bioware had predicted this very situation - that I would fall virtual head over digital heels for the wrong man - and had written heartfelt dialogue just for me.

And yes of course, the “me” that Dorian was entangled with was the “me” in the game – a semi-magical, dagger-wielding dwarf. But I still felt like he was talking to me me – the me sitting cross-legged on the floor of her bedroom, eyes wide, reminiscing over all the heartbreak she’d experienced before, because it all felt just like this. Isn’t it odd how it’s taken so long to reach this stage in games – the stage at which human conversations and relationships feel real?

Rebounds and revelations
But it’s not all sunshine, daisies and finding out your boyfriend’s gay. In Dragon Age: Inquisition, I also had to dump someone. I play games to escape this kind of thing – and perhaps it wouldn’t have bothered me so much if, once again, it hadn’t felt so damn real. In the wake of Dorian’s news, I had a bit of a rebound thing for Blackwall, the stronghold’s resident grumpy beard-wearer . But after flirting with the dude precisely once, he went all serious on me and told me we probably couldn’t be together because I didn’t understand who he was. Fair enough, I thought – but apparently from that point onwards, we were in a relationship.

I only realised this when he tried to kiss me later on, and it all became horribly, cringingly familiar, because then I had to break up with him … during the sex scene he attempted to orchestrate. It was incredibly awkward, but again, so incredibly real and familiar that I felt like it was written just for me.

And finally, in what now seems like a tale of my own awkward relationship history, I went for Iron Bull – that’s the 10-foot man-beast from earlier on, if you couldn’t figure that one out. For a guy so intimidatingly muscular, he was the most surprisingly gentle, er, lover. The defining moment of our relationship was, again, our sex scene, where he checked for consent. I’ll reiterate: a game character CHECKED FOR CONSENT.

Consent is sexy. Consent is cool. Consent is a very important thing, for women and men, and now it’s in big blockbuster video games. Dragon Age: Inquisition is easily the most personal, well-designed relationship system I’ve ever seen - and if we learn anything at all from the media we consume, then our awkward, virtual sexual encounters in games like this could maybe shape us all into better, more respectful people. Or at the very least, they could let us know that love, awkward or otherwise, can come in many guises – including 10ft-tall bovine hunks who sound like the guy from the Scooby Doo movies.

http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/jan/14/boyfriend-dragon-age-inquisition-gay

 

[pippin]

 

[vonAchdorf]

Funnily she praises exactly the 10ft Iron bull sleeping with a 3ft midget scene which caused much ridicule on the net. He's 10ft, she's 3ft, of course he asks if she thinks that's a good idea

 

[Gondolin]

Funnily she praises exactly the 10ft Iron bull sleeping with a 3ft midget scene which caused much ridicule on the net. He's 10ft, she's 3ft, of course he asks if she thinks that's a good idea

Iron Bull shouldn't have picked her up. She's just the right height...

 

[1451]

so this is the current audience they strive to please. No wonder they can't be bothered any more to design actual side quests, proper character creation and progression and tactical battles.

 

[pippin]

so this is the current audience they strive to please. No wonder they can't be bothered any more to design actual side quests, proper character creation and progression and tactical battles.

but you can role-play

 

[yes plz]

The "Don't like the side quests? Don't do them!" argument is fucking retarded. It's not just that they're dull and horribly boring to do but that they also make up roughly 75% of the entire game. The game can be upward to 80 hours and yet there's about six or seven story missions, each of which only take about an hour or sometimes less.

 

[Bleed the Man]

http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/jan/14/boyfriend-dragon-age-inquisition-gay

I don't like to judge people, I really don't, but this is just too fucking creepy to not be disturbed by it.

 

[1451]

Side quests are obligatory up to a point. You need the experience, loot and influence to progress the main mission. Thankfully they tied most of the tasks you complete with quests. You killed some random monsters? It was a quest. You clicked on a statue in the forest? You get inquisition power.